It was a great, grand beat mj heard now; a slow, steady, mesmerizing, southland river-cruisin’ beat; a syncopated Black gospel swing beat; and it was a very soulful baritone soloing again, croonin’ for all time:

Mmmlaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-zy-boohnes...........

Once upon a time, Bill Blackburn had been an apostle of the old avatar, Fred Waring, just as Poley and the rest of the Pennsylvanians had always been. But now, as a New Age savior of his very first disciple, Betty Ann McCall, Bill addressed his tiny congregation, recounting his own first-hand version of his own gospel story, the tale of his own rise to ascendancy over Fred Waring, at least as far as he and Betty Ann were concerned. It was a serious subject, therefore.

"So I went to see Poley. Alone. I went over there."

Mj lorenzo glanced at Betty Ann McCall and got no reaction. "Auh chuh huh," he laughed. He preferred to have permission from her to laugh at her for ‘making Bill do it alone’, as Bill liked to put it; but she did not acknowledge mj. Perhaps because: this was a serious subject right now.

"Betty Ann wouldn't go," Bill said. "She would not go. This girl was scared to death."

The young doctor felt a strong sympathetic compulsion to help poor Betty Ann feel better, somehow, about the way her awful husband was so openly, and shamelessly, using her as an object lesson in gutlessness. He wanted to save her from disgrace; or at least soften the blow, by showing that she was on his mind. So he said, "I thought Fred was supposed to tell Poley."

"Yes, he did," said Bill. "But they called to tell me how I should go tell Poley now."

"Oh, boy!!" Dlune shouted. What a farce. Dlune had gotten the message.

And Bill seized on perceived support. "This is all because I'm gettin' married! I've gotta go through all this goddam IN-trigue, right? To get permission to marry my wife!"

The Dr. laughed it up. He carried on at length, in fact, "!$#@$@-#!!!!X>>>," because an overwrought and ever more mystical – and penetrating – understanding of the mess was multiplying like some kind of organic light inside him. The light was penetrating into each bizarrely sculpted twist of metamorphosed maya mud. "<<<!$#@$@-#!!!!X>>>," he laughed and laughed. "...<<<<<..!..>>>>>...."

"So," Bill tried to continue. But he had to wait for hilarity to dissipate first, because this was a serious subject.

Finally Bill said, "I went in there."

Dlune was lost again, though, because social injustice was one of her fortes. Her college in Fort Smith, Alberta, had educated her to social injustice issues in the late sixties, and she said, "He couldn't fire you for marrying."

"Oh, bull shit!" Bill answered.

"Oh they do!” Betty Ann chimed, breaking her inscrutable silence. “There was a couple this year that was fired."

Dlune’s sense of fairness was offended. "You're kidding."

"And the guy," said Betty Ann, "had worked for Fred for four years."

"Ya know what Fred told them?” Bill said to Dlune. “He said, 'I'll take one of you back, but not both of you'."

"AH CHAH HAH HAH!" Poor mj lorenzo enjoyed one of the best private amplificatio tremendo’s of his whole life. He must have gotten a huge spiritual jolt off Fred’s line, ‘I’ll take one of you back, but not both of you’, because he laughed for several days about it off and on.

Bill said, "And both were rather important with Fred, I'd say. Just like that, BANG! But the point is, she's very hesitant to even marry me because, 'How are we going to tell these people?!' Is that true?"

Betty Ann was surprisingly droll, yet convincing. She showed exactly enough real emotion to convince her friends: "Oh, of course! Yeh!" she said. And she even seemed unaware that this might sound funny to people who had loved and married each other knowing nothing could stop them.

Two such people looked first at one, and then at the other of the two Blackburns, and wanted to snicker. They stifled it. But they made the mistake of looking at each other. It ripened, and they rocked and burst and spewed laughter at straight-faced Betty Ann; who would have forgone marriage rather than tell her boss and the boss’s best friend, both of whom were crazy and dying old men, that she was in love with someone other than them, and actually, of all things, wanted to marry him! And after the interview was over the Lorenzos could hardly believe, even weeks later, that Betty Ann had not made this role up just to make them laugh. But she had not.

!!!XG^*++#!!! XX$$%!...  ##XX$@!...

###^^&&@@XX!!!

<<<<<..!!XXX!!..>>>>> !

The Creator was ‘so beautiful’, as the guru had said on one tape, that he had made beautiful oceans, then given them waves and movement, and put so many lives into the oceans, ‘so many beautiful lives’. The Creator had made the Earth, and made man, and made the whole world, made the whole universe. And that was ‘a lot’, the guru said. It was a lot to do. Especially compared with man, for example, who had gotten himself as far as the moon finally and gone "Yay!" and had thought he was hot stuff, even after tripping into every kind of trap imaginable while getting there. But the Creator had made the moon, manufactured the whole thing. And it just seemed to him, the young guru, from his humble young universe-connected perspective, he said, that if someone did a job that big, as big as the universe, it was common sense to think there must have been some kind of reason for it all, some purpose behind so much work."²

There must have been some reason, therefore, thought mj, for the Creator’s having created Bill and Betty Ann; and even, maybe, a Betty Ann who would not get married if it meant telling Fred and Poley. But what the heck could it be?

Bill Blackburn was scoring heroism points; and poor Betty Ann was losing in the heroic category.

"OK,” said Bill, satisfied he was understood sufficiently and perfectly, and that his wife was still with him and backing him regardless of how maimed her reputation was by now, thanks to him.

“Now,” he said triumphantly, even pausing a little for dramatic emphasis: “So I went and told Poley."

There was a deliberate hypnotizing two/four beat. The Pennsylvanians were in full chorus now, hymn-like, rocking and hymning on the flow of a big, rhythmic, slow-moving giant river, maybe, or an invisibly-moving bayou.

"I drove in the yard," Bill said, "and up to the back door. And I knocked on the door, and Yvette came to the back door and said –."

Bill made Yvette sound hesitant: "'Oh. Hello, Bill. You wanna come in’?

"I said, 'Yes, I'd like to come in, I'd like to talk to you a second'."

Old rockin' chair's gaht meee,

Cane by my siiiiide.³

A single soprano echoed the line:

Canebymysiiiiide..

"So, meanwhile Fred had coached me. He had said that I should talk to Poley like he was ‘a father’ of Betty Ann. It would make things ‘a lot easier’."

The beat was incredibly hypnotizing. But what was more startling: the harmony was rich and four-part, like a Dresden church chorale in Bach’s day:

Fetch me that gin, son,

'Fore I tan your hide.

And the solo soprano echoed in the baroque transepts:

I'lltanyourhiiiiide...

It was just one more arrangement for chorus and orchestra of a Hoagy Carmichael song, nothing more. But like so many Waring hits, it was a dynamite arrangement combined with a Fred Waring triumph of interpretation. And the Pennsylvanians had done it on the road for years to packed houses of die-hard fans from the old Waring days; so MCA had included it, too, on their 2-record set, “A Very Special Hour with Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians.”

Bill knew his dramatic pace was about to build; and so he decided to recap background historical points in saga-master form. As official mythical frog-prince and savior-bard, he possessed the right to legendize his savior-frog tale of sacrifice and woe: "Poley and Yvette were like parents to Betty Ann for fifteen years on the road," he re-capped Biblical history, setting a tone for the next part of the legend. He knew how to do such storyteller-ly things. And an audience who truly appreciated what was going on might have imagined a title or headline for this section of holy fairy tale as:

Myth Maker

Surviving Miry Odyssey

Recounts All

"Yvette watched after the girls in the chorus," he went on, “starting from the year that Fred insisted Yvette go on the road to keep Poley from drinking! Right? And Poley had been fond of Betty Ann ever since the day she had brought him his meals in bed. Right?"⁴

It was a storytelling technique often used for training tenderfoot braves: to go back and recap the history that had been revealed via tales told during previous storytelling sessions.

And too, as mj realized: Poley had always been the deposed avatar’s, i.e. Fred’s, ‘most beloved disciple’. So, in other words, it was always essential to remember that Poley had slept his whole lifetime, since the year 1900, when they were born just a block and six months apart from each other, figuratively with his head on Fred Waring’s breast.

"And she lived with Poley and Yvette in Shawnee,” Bill recapped; “and she was just as much to blame for this whole parent thing as they were."

"So I went in and I said, 'I have something: a little momentous news I'd like to tell you people’.

"And Fred also told me not to let them know that he had told me he was going to tell them.

"They said, 'Oh, really’?! Like they didn't know a thing. And that irritated me even worse!"

New Age Savior

Recounts Ordeal of Personal Sacrifice

Bill was clearly disgusted. He must have identified with Chief Joseph by this point in the tale: his favorite Indian hero, poor old Chief Joseph, who had let himself be dragged all around Orrie Gone Creation mercilessly for years and years by crazy White Man, just because it was the only way to save his tribe. Bill was re-experiencing poor Chief Joseph’s terrible and sad ordeal, of being chased all over the territory by a bunch of crazy, senseless, pale people who had left their own stomping ground because they had not understood dog shit about how to live in their own land contentedly; yet had assumed they knew better than Chief Joseph how to live in his stomping ground.

"My wedding... was just getting mired down in all this hypocrisy, y'know!

And mj lorenzo sympathized. "Yeh!" He held back an urge to guffaw. "But," said mj, "what did you say that Fred said, not to say?"

Bill checked with mj at every juncture of his answer: "He said not to tell Poley;... that Fred had told me;... that he was going to tell them;... that I was going to tell them.... OK?..."  He had to make sure tenderfoot mj was with him still.

“No.” It was not okay. It was too complicated. And mj did not comprehend it, even still. But he dropped it, out of respect for Bill’s storytelling momentum. "Allright," said mj, letting things proceed.

And they did; and with the seriousness of Bill’s mood still intact, despite the one millionth juvenile tenderfoot interruption, fortunately: "So, I figured I'd better play this game. And the thing that really made me feel that way, was the way she said –." Bill did a rehearsed, over-dramatized Betty Ann: "'Oh, if ever he had a heart attack, Bill, I could not live with myself’!

“So Yvette calls Poley," Bill said, while his tiny audience struggled, still trying to stifle mirth. 

The antique, spiritual-like, Black gospel song, as arranged, came off like a kind of holy hymn, there was no denying. And yet it retained a kind of slowly rockin' blues feel. It rocked, in fact, like a slowly rockin’ holy rockin’ CHAIR.

Somewhere in the world, there must have been a rocking chair that was holy; and slow:

Can't get from this ca-biiin....

Go-in' no-wheeeehre....

"Poley shuffled from the living room to the kitchen. We sat at the kitchen table. And I mean 'shuffled'. So he walked in. He said," Bill acted surprised, as Poley acted: "'Oh. Hi... Bill, how are you’? I said, 'Fine’. And he created all kinds of small talk, and made all kinds of reasons to get up from that table and keep getting away before I could go into something, every time he came back.

“Now if you knew Poley, he doesn't start conversation. He started more damn stinkin' conversations about everything about whatever. I don't remember, y'know."

The Waring song in mj’s head was arranged too dramatically to be about nothing but a rocking chair, of course. But the biggest surprise was the way it succeeded at the unlikely trick of being both bluesy and churchly-hymn-like at the same time. How could Fred Waring, or anyone, have produced such a miracle of choral sound as that combination?

It made the swamp feel SACRED!

Just sit-tin' here grab-biiiin'

At the flies 'round this rock-in' chaaaaair....

"So finally," Bill did old Yvette in his nose, trying to make her sound curious: “Yvette says, 'Well, Poley, Bill says he has some big news for us, and I'd like to hear it'!"

"Hahmph," said mj, because Yvette had starred in silent film. And she seemed actress-y as Bill had done her.

Bill said, "So I said....,"

He was obviously tiptoeing once again on ‘thin hen's eggs’.

New Savior of Betty Ann

Asks Old Savior's Favorite Disciple's Permission to Marry Her

(While Tip-Toeing On Thin Hen’s Eggs)

"I said, 'Well, I wanted to come over and let you people know before it got out, because it's important to Betty Ann. She thinks of you people as something like parents’. I didn't say, 'As parents’. 'And she's been very close with you for years, and I wanted to let you know that...'," Bill paused: "'I asked Betty Ann to marry me and she's accepted. And we thought since you're so involved in her life, you'd like to be... the first to know."

It was a Big Band sound now, jazzy, upbeat and New Orleans danceland style, right along with the full chorus forte:

My dear old Aunt Har-ri-et!

In Hea-ven she beeeeee!

Send me Sweet Cha-ri-ot!

For the end of Trou-ble I seeeeeeeee....

Old Savior's Favorite Male Disciple

Responds to New Savior’s Request to Marry

Old Savior’s Favorite Female Disciple

"Poley jumped up and he says," Bill sounded genuine: "'Oh, that's wonderful! Are we the first to know’? Ho-ho-huh. We went through this whole god-damn thing again!!"

"Ohh," Dlune sympathized.

"And I said, 'Yeh!'” Bill added.

Dlune laughed at the answer.

"And he knew damn well," Bill said, "he wasn't! I think Fred did talk to 'im, don't you?"

"Yeh!" said Betty Ann.

A trumpet fanfare blasted and the Pennsylvanians sang:

Glory, glory!!

Followed by even more trumpet fanfare and glory:

Glory, glory!!...

And finally there was a trumpet fanfare to beat the fanfarin' band; and it was a chorale-like line which the Pennsylvanians were singing:

Judg-ment Day is here!...

With chimes ringing out.

! ! !! (Chime chime.)

Poor Dlune had fallen into the trap of trying to psychoanalyze holy river muck, however; just as everybody before her had. Somebody had forgotten to tell her, poor thing, that the rest of the world had already stood on their heads trying to understand this river muck and had nearly drowned in the muck trying: "They probably play parent to everybody," she said.

"Sure they do," Betty Ann said.

"They're born parents,” mj the junior shrink jumped in: “and you're a born orphan." He looked at Betty Ann.

"Yes," agreed Bill. "So I had all these parents I had to see. And I had to telephone her father, her foster, legitimate father."

"What did he say," Dlune asked, "'Was I the first to know'?"

"Ye-eh!" Betty Ann endorsed the foolish jibe, laughing at herself. Finally!

Bill liked the punch too. "I said that to 'im! 'We wanted you to know first'!" Bill laughed and yelled: "I said that! I had gotten in the habit of saying that. Ha-ha-ha-ha –."

And mj lorenzo took off on the thing too; but for his own unutterable reasons, of course. He let go a mighty belly-soul laugh that was great for the heart, freeing at least three planets in a faraway galaxy from darkness.

He had kept hearing the guru say, as Dr. Lorenzo explained years later, how ‘perfect’ it all was. It wasn't ‘perfect’ enough ‘to just have an ocean’, as the guru had put it; it also ‘had to have waves’. It wasn't enough to make mountains; but to have you climb them and stand on them, right on the very tippy top. And then The Creator had to go and add peak snow and a rainbow. ‘Immaculate perfection’ was what Joey’s guru had called the whole immense thing.⁵

And it wasn’t just enough to make Bill and Betty Ann, and let them row their boats on the lakes and walk their hikes on the mountains, as mj thought in his head. The Creator had to go and give the two of them a love affair; the perfect love, in fact; and the perfect friends for witnessing their love affair.

Bill was loud and laughing. Like any regular street opportunist, he capitalized to the nth degree on Dlune’s perfectly timed naive quip when he made up the next bit, almost certainly fictionalizing it: "Then I called and told my mother the same thing! 'Mom, I got news for you! You're the first one to know’!" He cried real tears of real laughter, Bill-style. "I don't know who...," he choked, "who was the first one to know!! #@%&*#!  Hooooggghh$%#XX@#!"

It was a soprano solo backed by full varmint choir now, singing loudly but slowly in river muck; rip-soulin'; wailin'; like a super-loud Black gospel blues chorale:

Ol' rock-in' chair has done got me, Loohrd!

Judg-ment Day is heeere!

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oooohhhh!

The soprano sounded nostalgic for heaven:

Go-in' to Heah-veehn

In my rock-in' chaaaaair....

Chimes rang out pure:

..!.!.  (Chime chime.)

"Well, mj. To finish this. Because this is, this –..."

"This vaudeville," mj said. "This Sunday School borscht circuit."

Betty Ann laughed.

But mj’s mind was still yelling: 'This tragic theater! This maya mud wrestling! This passion play!...'

"Are you ‘building’ to something still?" he asked his storyteller.

"Yep!" said Bill.

"Still?! Chuh huh."

"He's always ‘building’ to something," said Betty Ann, aiming deftly at a chink in her husband’s armor that only the married couple could have known about and explained for certain: probably it was his compulsion for telling super-long and super-dramatic stories day and night, year in and year out. He had to tell stories to live, Bill Blackburn did, to survive emotionally; and if you wanted to be his friend, you simply had to accept the fact. He rarely could stop to listen to you or to anyone else, because he was so driven to talk to you himself; and it must have been not an easy thing to live with, on a twenty four hour basis. You could try one day to tell him your own little insignificant tale, but few people in the world were more assertive than Bill Blackburn. And poor Betty Ann must have had to develop a whole repertoire of vaudeville stunts just to get her man’s attention around the house.

"No," Bill said, wounded deftly, "no but it-i-I –." He felt the fencing touché immediately.

But mj was pleased and he said, "I just want you to keep ‘building’ and ‘building’ and ‘building’!"

Betty Ann laughed. Her little buddy’s funny request surprised her. And it amused her, even if she was truly sick and tired of her husband’s endless drama-building story approach to everything under the sun.

Bill seemed unsure suddenly whether his New Age congregation (of three) truly supported his elaborate version of the proper gospel truth; and he defended it. "Mj, if you don't know this, then the other parts –. You've got to lay the groundwork, really, 'cause nobody would believe this."

"People might not buy the groundwork, either,” mj teased, needling Bill for building up his new testament on his old testament so painstakingly. “It’s too crazy. It’s way too crazy for psychoanalytic theory to do anything with. People must think you made it up!"

Mj looked at his wife suddenly with concern, finally remembering that Dlune had NOT come to hear all the ‘building up’ and ‘building up’ and building up to the wedding; but just the wedding itself.

"Are you working into the wedding?" mj asked Bill, while looking at Dlune.

"Yes," Bill assured.

"OK. Then go ahead," mj chuckled.

Bill knew how to be patient with restless audiences, fortunately. He had been forced to learn how; because U.S. Americans were not used to hours and hours of storytelling like he had grown up on (during the 30s and 40s) , having spent whole summers with his mother and other defunct-Huron-tribe leftovers on Native reservations and far northern backcountry outposts like back porches and bar stools, listening to old relatives’ stories and more stories.

"So,” Bill proceeded at last, “Yvette said, 'Well, that's nice of you to come over and tell us first, Bill,' y'know. 'Now we haven't gotten along very well at times, and we've had our differences. I know. But we want you to know that we're going to think of you as a son'."

"Just what you wanted," shouted young doctor mj lorenzo, as some funny bone in him snapped, "another goofy father!" and he disrupted Bill Blackburn’s New Age Elaborated Gospel one more time, with a burlesque outburst of hilarity.

Bill waited until the ruckus had died. Then plaintively, re-experiencing it all, he said: "I thought: ‘Maybe this will make things better, because Betty Ann is still living over the garage’. So I said, 'Well, that's awfully nice of ya’.

And Bill would come to regret that stupid ‘thought’, as mj said to himself, knowing the story as he did.

“And Yvette came up to me and she put her arms around me and I put my arms around her. And Poley shook my hand; and Poley went out of the room!

“And she said," Bill softened and spoke at a deliberate pace, dramatizing every nuance: "'You know! Poley really loves that girl! Now I don't care about me, Bill! BUT! When you two are married, I think it would be a very nice thing if Poley gave her away!"

"Tuh!" mj reacted, knowing the whole story.

"I says," Bill was peeved: "'Yvette, we've got a little problem in the fact that John McCall is Betty Ann's legal adoptive father. And I'm sure he's gonna wanna give her away'."

Bill grew soft, and in dead earnest. "She says," he sounded eager, as she had: "'Well..., maybe both of them could do it'!"

"AH CHAH HAH!" went mj.

"Now we come to the wedding," said Bill.

"To the WHAT?!" mj teased.

"To the wedding!"

"Meanwhile," said Betty Ann, "everyone is passed out!"

But Bill defended his long and detailed Waring sutra, aiming his defense at mj lorenzo himself for some reason, not at the ladies at all, even though they were the chief complainants: "Believe me, mj, if people are going to understand how ridiculous this organization is, that story I just related about us getting together... –. There it is, right?"

"Yeh," said mj. "In a large and fragile eggshell. Hnn—."

"Well," Bill was unperturbed because he was an incredible hero, and he knew it. "Comes the wedding." He added a few final globs of muddy pathos: "Now Poley is demanding to this very moment he's gonna give Betty Ann away. And when he found out John McCall was not gonna be there, that was it. It was just a foregone conclusion."

The guru had his own incredible theory, of course, just exactly why the universe had been created and so many beautiful things put into it that could delight humans. He had not been building and building on this theme without reason. The Creator, he said, had not stopped with just making human beings, he had actually given them life inside, given them a form, and given them the opportunity of being born into the world. And the Creator had not even stopped at that. Because human beings also had been given the very special chance to live at the very same time that their guru lived. They had a chance to have the experience of learning Truth straight from their guru in a real and personal relationship. And nothing in the whole enormous and incredible universe was more perfect than that, he said. THAT was the absolute pinnacle of perfection, the be-all and end-all of human existence.⁶

"So," Bill said, "at the wedding, I said to Fred, 'Thank you,' and all this stuff.

"And he said," Bill was gruff: "'Don't thank me. I had nothing to do with it’.

"I said, 'You certainly did. You were the first one to know about it’.

"And Fred said," Bill acted indignant: "'You told Poley before you told me'!"

"Ohhh," mj lamented. "No!"

"Ohh," protested Dlune equally.

On the contrary, love is glad with all good men when Truth prevails.  And love knows no limit to its endurance, and no end to its trust, and no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything.  And it still stands when everything else has fallen.⁷